Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

April 10, 1956. THE STRUCTURE OF THE Déjà Vu EXPERIENCE. Jacob A. Arlow, M.D.

The déjà vu is common in normal and in pathological states. Freud noted that déjà vu corresponds to the memory of an unconscious fantasy; Oberndorf, that it constitutes a defense against a future danger as well as anxiety associated with the memory of an undefined, unsolved experience of the past; Marcovitz, that it represents the illusory fulfilment of a wish that one might make the outcome accord better with the desire.

Dr. Arlow cited in detail two déjà vu experiences that occurred in the analysis of a thirty-three-year-old male patient. In the first, the analogy to dreams was emphasized; i.e., each manifest element in the déjà vu phenomenon was richly determined by its latent connections. The entire reaction, like a dream, was interposed in the patient's psychic life against the genetic development of his conflict. Both the affective tone and the accompanying misjudgment of perceptions could be understood in the same manner as the manifest content of a dream; i.e., they represent condensed expressions of many latent trains of thought, subject to defensive distortions and displacement, capable of representing the expression of wish fulfilment. A second example from the same analysis was cited to demonstrate the overdetermined defensive structure of déjà vu.

Dr. Arlow then postulated theoretical formulations for the phenomenon. The déjà vu constitutes a defense against overwhelming anxiety. It represents the result of a combination of several defensive activities of the ego in a situation which both symbolizes and stimulates the revival of an anxiety-producing memory, wish or fantasy. The memory, wish or fantasy which threatens to emerge is minimized as being unreal, dreamlike or already past. The inner source of anxiety is suppressed by projection or external displacement. The current situation is offered as a substitute for the original memory or fantasy in an effort to keep t